Dr. Robert Clarke is the Dean for Research and Interim Director for the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC). He is an internationally recognized leader in breast cancer research. He studies how hormones, growth factors, and other related molecules affect breast cancer, and how breast cancers become resistant to hormonal and cytotoxic chemotherapies.

An internationally recognized leader in breast cancer research, Dr. Robert Clarke studies how hormones, growth factors, and other related molecules affect breast cancer, and how breast cancers become resistant to hormonal and cytotoxic chemotherapies. He has broad expertise that includes estrogens, antiestrogens, aromatase inhibitors, cell signaling, bioinformatics, drug resistance, signal transduction, and systems biology.

Dr. Clarke has developed a series of hormone resistant breast cancer models that are now widely used in the field, and he continues to develop new experimental models. He is currently developing and applying genomic and novel bioinformatic methods to data from ongoing translational studies in both humans and experimental models of breast cancer. In other research, Dr. Clarke and his colleagues have recently identified a new, systems-biology based molecular signaling network in breast cancer that involves several novel oncogenes and suppressor genes. This integrated network incorporates cell stress signaling, protein misfolding (unfolded protein response), and communication among the endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, and nucleus of breast cancer cells. Ultimately, this network determines if a breast cancer cell will grow, differentiate or die, and the mechanism by which the cell will die (apoptosis, autophagy-associated cell death, ferroptosis, lysosome-dependent cell death, mitochondrial permeability transition-driven necrosis, necroptosis, necrosis, parthanatos, and pyroptosis), in response to therapy.

Currently, Dr. Clarke lead (and leads) several multinational molecular medicine studies in breast cancer, with several colleagues within the breast cancer program at Georgetown, and in collaboration with Dr. Minetta Liu (Mayo Clinic) and collaborators at Virginia Tech and the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). for example, he led a NCI-funded Center for Cancer Systems Biology (2010-2016) and with Dr. Subha Madhavan at LCCC, he led an NCI-funded In Silico Research Center of Excellence (2009-2014). Dr. Clarke is regularly invited to speak about his research at international and national meetings. Representative publications from his bibliography can be found elsewhere in this profile.

Dr. Clarke served as a member (2010-2014) and as Chair (2011-2013) of the NIH peer-review study section Basic Mechanisms of Cancer Therapeutics; previously he had served a term as Chair of the Basic Science study section for NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (2002-2008), now call the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. He also serves on the editorial boards of over a dozen international peer review journals. For example, Dr. Clarke is a Senior Editor for the journal Cancer Research, an Associate Editor for Endocrine-Related Cancer, and a member of the Editorial Boards of over a dozen journals including Clinical Cancer Research, Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, and British Journal of Cancer. Dr. Clarke is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in the U.K.

Dean for Research and Interim Director for the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC), home to 60% of biomedical research at GUMC, Dr. Clarke is an Associate Vice President of GUMC. He is also Co-Director (with Dr. Claudine Isaacs) of the Breast Cancer Program (Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center). Dr. Clarke served as a member of the Georgetown University Faculty Senate (2002-2011) and as Secretary-Treasurer (2004-2007).